Consequence
by Grav
Summary: This was not Vala's first encounter with a life altering parasite.


AN: Technically, this is for a mother's day ficathon but…there are things about Vala's motherhood that bug me. This isn't particularly rosy.

Spoilers: Season Nine, early season ten

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Summary: This was not Vala's first encounter with a life altering parasite.

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**Consequence**

This was not Vala's first encounter with a life altering parasite.

_Vala's mother had died or run off. Vala could never remember. Her father changed his story depending on his mood and Adria couldn't be depended on for anything. Vala was a skinny child, but she was pretty. She learned early how to take advantage of that, and, shortly afterwards, when to run._

When she felt the child begin to move inside her, Vala felt sicker than she'd ever been in her entire life. The local midwife told her that it was just morning sickness and Tomin fretted for weeks on end, but Vala knew it wasn't true. Every part of her body was rejecting this child. It was unnatural and horrific and she could not cast it forth.

_Qetesh was a beautiful woman, even before she stole Vala's body. Once, Qetesh came upon a pair of priestesses gossiping about their new goddess' form. The women had speculated that Qetesh was willing to give up a little in looks for what she gained in voice. Their tongues burnt in offering to their goddess on the next holy day._

Vala feigned illness long after the sickness finally subsided. She could not bear to go outside. Word had spread into the village that the Ori were saving Tomin's heathen wife by gifting her with the bearing of their child and every time she left the house, she felt a hundred eyes upon her. Tomin left her alone, and for that much she was grateful.

_Qetesh was not the goddess of fertility. She had no call towards children and no desire to nurture life. Instead she rejoiced in sex without consequence, in the satiation of appetite. Her rituals were celebrated with the scent of lotus blossoms on the heavy night air as the ground writhed with serpents beneath the careful steps of her revelers. There was no thought of the future, only of the pleasure of the now._

Vala didn't pray anymore, but she wished. She wished hard that there was a logical explanation for this. While the Prior droned on and on, she wished the baby was Tomin's. Lying on her stomach on the hard paving stones of the square, she desperately tried to think of something while the townspeople droned their adoration around her. When her belly grew too big to lie flat, the Prior allowed her a chair. She pretended to be grateful and wished the knives from the kitchen would cut into her flesh.

_The first thing Vala remembered was the Tok'ra. They were a cold people who had little pity for the broken soul they had released. She watched them destroy Qetesh, but it gave her no peace. They sent her home, but home hadn't wanted her in a very long time. Her father was away and Adria wouldn't let her in the house. Vala broke in after nightfall and stole the mnemonics her father had kept hidden in the wall-safe._

The rebels approached her tentatively. They thought she was a believer, after all. Their failed assassination attempt sparked a frantic alliance and Vala began to hope again. When she found a way to travel in thought back to the SGC, she knew that at least she would be able to warn them. It wasn't a lot, but it was all she was going to get.

_Crime and deception came easy to Vala. Her father's influence and a life of avoiding her stepmother had begun her training, and Qetesh's memories had taught her a lot about how the universe worked. Soon she had contacts across the galaxy and there was always someone after her. Life without consequence, and if she died, it would finally end._

When the rebels failed and Tomin offered her one last chance, she took it. She knew the Ori wouldn't kill her and for the first time in a long while, she wanted to live. She wanted to see what she carried, if it was truly as monstrous as it felt or if there was some innocence in it. She hoped for the latter. There had been no tie between herself and Adria, but she knew that the only way she would save the galaxy was if she could forge something between herself and the abomination she bore.

_Vala loved the _Prometheus_. She loved everything about it. When she was on the run again, she came back to them, back to Earth, because she knew that they would take her in. She led them to the Ori and she died and, for a while, there was nothing. But the Ori needed her alive and so they sent her back. She didn't understand why, but she was afraid. She knew what could happen when a god needed your body. Daniel didn't understand. He thought they were lucky but then, he'd never lost his soul to another being._

When the first pains swept through her, she tried not to let her attendants know. The Prior appeared in her quarters anyway and set the women to their tasks. Tomin came and held her hand and, for a moment, she was almost happy. But she saw the child's eyes when she was ripped away, and knew then that any bond she forged would be for nothing. There was no human quality in that vessel.

_She didn't hesitate for a moment after she realized the only way to keep the super Gate from engaging. She stole her ship back and flew into the gap, convinced that, finally, there would be consequence and she would die. When she woke up in Ver Isca, she despaired. As the weeks passed and she grew closer to the man who took her into his house, she thought that maybe, Prostration aside, this life was not so bad._

The child that summoned her was a demon. Of this, Vala had no doubt. It might call her mother, but she had no choice in its nurturing. She hated it and loved it, helpless to destroy it or let it be destroyed. All she could do was give it the name she hated second most in the universe and hope that some day its love for her would be its undoing.

_The day that she felt new life stir within her, Vala thought she had finally gone crazy. She snuck out into the forest and gathered an herb known to make pregnant women sick. Tomin worried that the meat in the soup had been rotten, and Vala didn't get out of bed the whole next day. There was a battle to be fought here, and it was not one that she was about to shrink from. She would not let herself be used again this way._

_This was not Vala's first encounter with a life altering parasite._

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**finis**

AN: Qetesh is the goddess of sex, not fertility, in the Chaldean/Semitic Pantheon. In Egypt, she became the wife of Reshpeh and the mother of Min, and eventually was incorporated in Hathor. On the Canaanite side of things, she may also be related to Asherah and thus associated Ba'al.

GravityNotIncluded, May 18, 2007


End file.
